Tuesday, May 18, 2010

How I Met My Burger

I was visiting with some friends on a Saturday afternoon feeling a little peckish, so we decided to grab a burger from this little European restaurant down the street. We could have just walked down there and ordered it but -

“Why don’t we call and order ahead so it will be ready when we get there?” Pondered one of us geniuses. (I don’t remember which one.)Actually, he was right. When we walk in, we order, wait 20 minutes, get bored, read yesterday’s Sun and last month’s Maclean’s, and sit mostly in silence.

“You, sir, are a genius,” Answered another genius. We can call ahead, order the food, leave in about 10 minutes and we don’t have to wait when we get there.

However, this solution created another problem: we didn’t know their phone number. Aaaah, and where do you look up a phone number? A phone book.

Well, who has phone books anymore? Do you have a phone book? Are you using it or is it still wrapped in that plastic stuff, propping up a table leg?

Sometimes in apartment lobbies, they have piles of phone books that nobody wants (I like to build forts out of them.)

But all of the phone books from public phones have been removed. Am I to believe that there’s some sort of black market for phone books? Sometimes, they take the book AND the phone!

What are you going to do with an empty booth... just stand in it and look around?

Anyways...

We decide to go Yellowpages.com.

“What’s the name of the restaurant?”

Nobody knew.

Not only that, this late on a Saturday, we didn’t know if they were even open before we started salivating over the thought of devouring one of those homemade beef beauties.

But fate was smiling upon us for, having been there before and about to make the same trek again, we obviously knew where it was. I decided to Google Map the cross streets and zoom into street view (Google Map is a verb, look it up.)

Not only did I get a) the name of the restaurant, but b) their phone number was printed on the outside sign. And c) I found out they accept debit. I felt like I was on CSI (but of course, if that were the case, I could have enhanced the sign on the front door and read their hours too.)

Dear Google street view: You scare the shit out of me with your blatant disregard for privacy and it still creeps me out that anyone on the internet can see my front porch, but damned if you're not convenient.